The Columbus Code

by mike Evans

  “You’re doing so well!” Abuela said to her on Easter weekend when she’d heard about the trip. They’d spent the weekend coloring eggs and eating ham and putting lilies on the grave of Abuelo, the grandfather Maria never knew. Abuela had taken Maria’s face in both hands and said exactly what Maria knew she would say. “Your mama would be so proud.”

  Fourteen years after the fact and they were still crying. Abuela had always grieved as if Maria’s mother, Anne, was her own daughter. She definitely grieved more than Dad had . . .

  Maria blinked away the blur in her eyes and went back to the notes. Emilio Tejada, president and CEO of Catalonia Financial, would conduct the meeting himself and she would have to take notes rather than record the session. “Tejada’s a tough bird, set in his ways,” Snowden had written.

  She couldn’t think about “tough old birds” right now either. That was how her Uncle David referred to Abuela. Everything was leading back to her.

  Maria’s mind continued to wander and finally she crammed the papers into her briefcase, then sat quietly watching the raindrops stream sideways on the window of the racing train. She almost knew more about Abuela than she did about herself. Her father had even suggested during their stilted phone conversation that she should give the eulogy.

  Was he the most insensitive creature ever to inhabit the planet? Maybe he didn’t know that this was the first funeral she would attend since that awful September day when they buried Mom.

  Or maybe he didn’t know her at all.

  Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church was a ponderous old place that had changed as little as Winters’ mother had in the years since he had been an acolyte there. He had carried the cross up the aisle nearly every Sunday because he was the only teenager left in the parish. The congregation had consisted largely of octogenarians back then, mixed with the few faithful younger people like Olivia Winters who were devoted to the denomination. He couldn’t imagine what was still holding it together.

  But it was actually a fairly young priest who met him at the door when he and Ben arrived, dripping umbrellas in hand. He might have been Ben’s age, though he was visibly more mature. But then, who wasn’t?

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Father Todd. Is the family all here?” he asked after the introductions had been made.

  Ben brushed past him and peered between the swinging doors into the sanctuary. “I don’t see Maria,” he said.

  “How long do you want to wait?” Father Todd asked.

  “Until my daughter gets here,” Winters answered.

  “Uncle David’s in there,” Ben said when the priest had left them. “How’d he get here?”

  “They brought him over in the van from the nursing home. His wheelchair wouldn’t fit in the trunk of my rental car.”

  Ben gave him a lopsided grin. “You’re still cheap.”

  Winters had spent only four hours with his brother and he was already wishing he’d—

  Just then, the door to the narthex opened and a figure clad in a white trench coat and carrying a red briefcase slipped in and tossed back a mass of honey-colored curls. Winters’ throat tightened. His daughter looked just like her mother—liquid gold eyes peering through the semidarkness, head held high and almost haughty, hand reaching for her hair. Just as Anne had, Maria signaled her mood by whatever her hand was doing to her hair.

  When she saw him, her fingers clawed at it and any hope of a smile disappeared from her face. That was too bad, because Maria had a marvelous smile that Winters thought upstaged the sun.

  “Hey,” he said and walked toward her. She didn’t pull away from the kiss he placed on her forehead, but he felt her stiffen. “You okay?”

  “Am I okay? No, Dad, I’m not okay.”

  Winters sucked in air. “I meant from the trip up here. You were cutting it a little close and I thought maybe you ran into trouble.”

  He was lying and she knew it. He saw the disbelief flicker through those limpid eyes. It wasn’t what he wanted to see.

  “Are we ready?” Father Todd asked.

  “We are.” Maria crossed to him and put her arms out. To Winters’ astonishment he pulled her into a hug and held on.

  “She loved you,” he said into her hair.

  She nodded, suddenly sobbing. Winters felt a sinking sensation in his chest.

  The service was everything Abuela wanted, Maria was sure. Traditional Episcopal liturgy. The same hymns they’d sung together at Easter. A sermon by Father Todd, whom her grandmother always referred to as “the young rector.”

  “You captured her beautifully,” she said to him afterward.

  “That wasn’t hard to do,” he said. “What you saw was what she was.” His eyes misted. “And what she was—that was something.”

  Maria could have hugged him again. He might have been “the young rector” to Abuela, but he was pretty much her fount of wisdom when it came to God. She wished they had more time together.

  “Come to the house, Father?”

  Maria bristled at her father’s voice. Brusque. Clipped. As if every word were part of an order.

  Father Todd declined. Maria wished she could, but there was no getting around the reception at Abuela’s house. The women in her circle had probably already descended on the place with cream-of-soup casseroles and comfort desserts. And if her Uncle Ben had anything to do with it, the wine would be flowing freely. At the very least she wanted to keep him from getting plastered for Abuela’s sake. She’d convinced her friends her younger son had all but, to use an Austin phrase, “hung the moon.”

  Abuela had always said she didn’t want anyone at the graveside, watching them “drop me into that hole,” so the limousine took Maria, her father, and Uncle Ben directly to the house. The ride would have been silent if Uncle Ben hadn’t bantered the entire time about absolutely nothing. Maria watched the muscles twitch in her father’s cheek. For once they were in sync.

  She’d been right about the food and the elbow-to-elbow crowd crammed into Abuela’s two-story clapboard house. Her ancient great-uncle, David, was already ensconced in his wheelchair in the living room with a glass of merlot in one hand and a cigar in the other. Maria marched toward him and removed both, replacing them with a kiss on the cheek.

  “That stuff won’t kill me!” he protested. “Smoked and drank all my life and never sick a day. Now they put me away in some home and look at me—sitting here like a fossil.”

  Maria didn’t bother to argue with that logic and headed to the dining room to fix him a plate. As she rounded the corner, she all but collided with her father, who was standing in the dark hall with his forehead pressed to the wall.

  “Dad?” she said.

  He recovered well. He always did. His penetrating dark eyes came back from wherever his mind had been and he slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks. Maria steeled herself for the prying questions and the lecture about whatever answers she gave him, no matter what they were.

  “Nice service,” he said.

  Maria nodded. “Just what she would have wanted.”

  “You’d know that better than I would.”

  Was that a trace of regret she was hearing?

  “Did you know?” he asked.

  “Know . . .”

  “That she was sick?”

  “She wasn’t. Not that I was aware of.”

  “So she just died in her sleep at seventy-two.”

  “It was the way she would’ve wanted that too.” Maria pulled her hair back in a handheld ponytail that collapsed the moment she removed her hand. “She always said when it was her time to go, she just wanted to fall asleep one night and not wake up.”

  “She usually got what she wanted,” Winters said. “I wish you’d agreed to an autopsy, though.”

  “I didn’t want her cut open. She died with dignity and I wanted to keep it that way.”

  He gave a soft grunt. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You
get what you want, too, don’t you?”

  Maria brought herself up to her full five-eight height. “No, Dad,” she said. “I don’t.” She spun around and started toward the kitchen.

  By the time she got back to the living room with Uncle David’s plate of starch and sucrose, the old man was waving a gnarled hand and hollering, “Johnny! Johnny, come over here and sit down. I want to say something to you.”

  If Uncle David intended for this to be a private conversation he was going about it the wrong way. He refused to wear hearing aids and, as a result, he shouted like a foghorn.

  Ben was sitting on the ottoman next to Uncle David’s wheelchair but he got up and moved to the love seat. Everyone else found an excuse to scurry out of the room, which left only the four of them. Uncle David’s reputation for interminable tales must have preceded him. Maria put the plate on the table beside him and started to join the group of rats who had abandoned ship but he caught her arm with one of his claws.

  “You need to hear this too, girlie,” he said.

  Maria sat beside Ben on the love seat. Winters stood with one elbow on the fireplace mantel. “What’s up, Uncle David?” he asked.

  “It’s not what’s up—it’s what’s down!” the old man hollered. “Now that Olivia is in the ground.”

  Really? Really? Maria thought.

  “Although if you believe like she did, her spirit is up, not down. Never could figure out why she still bought into all that.”

  “Did you call us all in here for a theology lesson, Uncle Dave?” Ben asked, furtively nudging Maria with his elbow.

  “Theology lesson? No!” Uncle David looked blankly at Ben. “Who said anything about theology? I was talking about the will.”

  Maria was sure she felt Ben’s pulse quicken. Abuela had told Maria several visits ago that she had stopped sending Ben money every time he asked for it. In Maria’s opinion, that was something she should have done about fifteen years ago.

  “She told me she was leaving all this to the three of you,” Uncle David went on, giving the room a flourish with his stiff arm. “But I’m sure she didn’t tell you about the hidden family treasure”—he paused for effect. For a moment Maria thought he had fallen asleep, then he finally finished, “In the attic.”

  “What are you talking about?” Uncle Ben asked. “Is there money hidden up there or something?”

  Maria was ready to grab him should he suddenly launch himself from the love seat and head for the stairs.

  “Something better than money.” Uncle David nodded sagely and fell into another endless pause. “That’s where she kept the family history.”

  Uncle Ben sagged. Maria wanted to smack him.

  “And I do mean ‘kept.’ She has that third floor locked up like Fort Knox. Wouldn’t let anybody else in there to look at that stuff.”

  Maria saw her father exchange glances with Ben.

  “Told you she spent all her time up there,” Ben said.

  “No she didn’t!” Maria snapped.

  “All right, I’ll bite.” Winters lifted his chin at the old guy. “What’s up there, Unc?”

  “The proof!”

  “Proof of what?”

  “Proof that this whole family is Looney Tunes,” Uncle Ben whispered to Maria.

  Uncle David squinted suspiciously at the doorway before he said, in a quiet voice, “Proof that we are direct descendants of Christopher Columbus.” He gave a deep nod and settled back in the wheelchair, visibly ready to enjoy watching the rest of them take it in.

  Ben’s shoulders shook until Maria jabbed him in the ribs. He put his lips next to her ear and said, “Told you they were Looney Tunes.” Out loud he said, “It must be a thing right now, all you baby boomers trying to prove your roots.”

  Uncle David didn’t appear to hear that, which was fortunate on two levels as far as Maria was concerned. He was a well-meaning old man who didn’t deserve to be pooh-poohed. And who in this room could be considered a baby boomer?

  Maria stood up and smoothed the creases in her skirt. “I have to get going,” she said and looked at her father. “I’ll come down and go through Abuela’s clothes if you want, when I get back from Barcelona.”

  She wanted to bite off her tongue. At the root. Why did she mention Barcelona? She pecked both uncles on their respective cheeks and, as she could have predicted, her father followed her out of the room.

  “You’re going to Barcelona,” he said.

  Maria stopped at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded. “I am. On a business trip.”

  “You’ll be careful.”

  “I’m not in the kind of business you’re in,” she said.

  She would have left it at that if she hadn’t seen him wince. It might have been imperceptible to anyone else, but it was clear to her. She’d spent eight years after her mother’s death studying his face so that maybe she could know what he was feeling. Old habits died hard.

  “What?” she asked. “You’re still with the Service, right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “Never mind.”

  She turned to leave but he caught her arm. When she looked down at it, he let go, but she stayed. He exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath all day.

  “I’m on paid leave right now,” he said.

  “Why?” She watched his Adam’s apple bob, something that had delighted her as a kid. Now it looked painful.

  “Lot of things stacked up,” he said finally. “Then a raid went bad and I . . . got a little depressed.” She waited. The apple bobbed some more. “They’ve got me seeing a doctor,” he continued. “She clears me, I go back to work.”

  There was a whole lot more to it, Maria was sure of that. But she was also sure that was all she was going to hear right now. It was the longest conversation they’d had in probably five years and she didn’t want it to end on a sour note. Not today. Not with Abuela’s spirit still so near.

  “Won’t be long now,” he added.

  “Good,” she said.

  “Johnny! Johnny, you heading for the attic?” Uncle David called. “Wait a minute and I’ll go up there with you.”

  “Bye,” Maria said.

  And she fled for her sanity.

  Winters stayed in Maryland for a week dealing with his mother’s estate. Ben was initially enthusiastic about helping, but after twenty-four hours he took a flight for Phoenix to return to whatever pressing matters awaited him. Winters still couldn’t figure out what Ben actually did there and had an uneasy feeling he didn’t want to know.

  By Friday he had things pretty well wrapped up. Maria sent him an e-mail listing the things she wanted and those were now in a storage unit where she could pick them up when she got back from Barcelona. Winters would have the maple bed and dresser shipped to his place in San Francisco. The rest of his mother’s belongings had been sold. All the paperwork was signed, the lawyer had the process in motion, and the only thing left to tackle was the attic.

  Winters had put that off for two reasons. First, Ben’s comment that Mom spent a lot of time up there frankly gave him the creeps. His mother was usually a stable woman, making sure everybody was fed, sending birthday cards with ten-dollar bills tucked inside, continually trying to build a bridge between him and Maria. But she did have—he guessed what people would call a “spiritual side.” Mom still carried on conversations with her long-deceased husband, Winters’ father, and said she “knew” things about Anne’s condition in the afterlife. He was half-afraid he’d find some kind of ritual altar up there. If not worse.

  The other thing that kept him out of the attic was Uncle David’s pronouncement that it contained “proof” that they were direct descendants of Christopher Columbus. Where had that come from? He knew his mother kept photo albums that went back to the Civil War days when photography was first used and she would tell him the name of every fifteen-times-removed relative in those pictures until his eyes glazed over.

  But she’d never mentioned a t
hing to him about Christopher Columbus. Uncle David was probably getting senile. Maybe that was what made Winters reluctant to go rooting around in trunks—the fact that it might not be true. But now that it had been suggested, it was actually intriguing. Curiosity—coupled with too much time on his hands after everything else was done—finally drove Winters to the third floor with a flashlight and a portable vacuum cleaner.

  Winters was surprised to find it well lit—an upgrade he had known nothing about. An old velvet couch he remembered used to be in the tiny room off the kitchen Mom called her “parlor” was the only thing not packed away in the expected trunks. Five of them were lined up neatly under the dormer window. The rest of the space was empty.

  Winters tossed the unneeded flashlight onto the couch and watched for a cloud of dust to puff up from the cushions, but there was none. That made the portable vacuum superfluous too. The tops of the trunks were dirt-free as well. Mom must have cleaned up there recently. Who dusted and vacuumed their attic?

  Although the air wasn’t at all chilly, Winters shivered. She’d saved him a lot of work, getting rid of all the detritus of their past lives he’d seen the last time he’d been there. Either she’d known she was going to die, or . . .

  Since he couldn’t come up with an alternative, Winters went to the first trunk, lifted the lid, and glanced down at the contents inside. Uncle David was wrong so far. She didn’t have anything locked down like Fort Knox. In fact, there was an envelope on top of a stack of overstuffed photo albums. His name—Johnny—was written across it in Mom’s precise handwriting.

  He tested the stability of the couch and perched on its edge to read the letter inside the envelope.

  Dear Son,

  If you’re reading this, I’m probably gone. I hope I had a nice death. I always wanted to save you boys and Maria the kind of grief we had when your father passed away. I’m with him now, so be happy about that.

  Since I’m in Paradise where all things are clear to me, I know for sure what I’ve searched for years to prove—that we are the direct descendants of Christopher Columbus. I’m sure this will come as a surprise to you, the fact that I have been researching this for a long time. You remember my trip to Salt Lake City? That was all about genealogy. I didn’t share this part of my journey with you because it just seemed that it should be between God and me. After all, that’s where the idea came from—one of those rare times when God whispered into my thoughts, “Olivia, you must do this.” I heard it when your father proposed to me and when I took Maria for the summers after Anne died and you couldn’t care for her, so I know I can trust it.